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Merry Orthodox Christmas! Thank goodness for Orthodox Christmas, without it this post would seem extremely outdated. I mean, come on, Christmas was twelve days ago! To all my readers celebrating Orthodox Christmas – Merry Christmas. I hope your day is filled with love, happiness and gingerbread.

In December I spent a lovely afternoon building a homemade gingerbread house with my friends Vanessa and Renee. Thank you to the charming Vanessa for baking the delicious gingerbread house from scratch! I’ve never had homemade gingerbread before.

Cream together shortening, sugar, molassas and water. Sift together flour, spices and salt. Add dry ingredients to shortening mixture and mix well. Dough will be stiff. Chill at least 1 hour. Grease or spray cast iron mold with vegetable spray. Press dough into the mold. Bake in pre-heated 350 degree oven for 25 minutes. Let gingerbread cool in the mold for 10 minutes. Carefully remove each piece of gingerbread to cooling rack, flat side down. Repeat with other side, front, roof, and chimney. It is better to bake gingerbread a day ahead of assembling to allow for stiffening. Assemble and decorate!

Combine in mixing bowl and mix on high speed for 7 to 10 minutes. Beat until very stiff – you can’t overbeat. Store at room temperature. This royal icing dries quickly into a hard candy consistency. Perfect for decorating the most charming of gingerbread houses!

Okay, okay, okay. I know you all hate looking at instagram food photos. But this is different, right? Because I used a real digital camera, not instagram. And I’m allowed to take food photos on vacation, right? Because the food tastes better and I am experiencing new things.

Whatever, this post is totally justified. Food was an important part of my Montreal/NYC vacation. We took lots of photos of it. We ate lots of it.

This week I had the pleasure of working with acoustic guitar player, Matt Hunter, for a work event. Matt recently created this charming music video; not only is the music lovely but the video highlights the quiet beauty of Saskatoon.

Is it too late to talk about the cupcakes I made for New Year’s Eve? I hope not because that is the topic of today’s late post (I usually blog on the weekends).

I spent New Year’s Eve with family. It was a lovely evening full of food, baking, board games, and hot tubbing. I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Eve and was very pleased to have a low-key, quiet evening.

To celebrate the beginning of 2012 my cousin and I made Red Velvet Vegan Cupcakes (found on Bon Appétempt). I’ve never attempted vegan baking before and was so pleased with how our cupcakes turned out. As Amelia said, “Nevermind that they are vegan, these cupcakes are delicious. Period.” Agreed – I would definitely make this recipe again. And because these cupcakes are vegan I feel like I can justify eating more of them (vegan = healthy, right?).

We cut out stencils for 2012 and an exploding star from a piece of paper and sifted cocoa power over the stencil to decorate the top of our vegan cupcakes. For the party-goers that do not like icing we sifted icing sugar on top of the cupcakes sans-icing to add a little fanciness.

Step one: collect supplies, treats, and inspiration. To get the creative vibes flowing I made some apple cider in my slow cooker. To make hot apple cider put the following ingredients in your slow cooker on high for a couple of hours: apple juice, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, sliced oranges and sliced lemons. Feel free to spike your cider with Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum. Yum!

Step three: Admire your beautiful artwork! I love the variety in the prints the crafty ladies made. Even though we all followed the same tutorial everyone’s artwork is completely original (unfortunately I didn’t a photo of the royal crown print).

It took us about three hours to finish this stencil art project. I think everyone is relatively happy with how their artwork turned out. I think all the prints look great!

I really enjoyed this craft. I never worked with contact paper before, but now know it is an ingenious craft supply that I will definitely be using for future craft projects.

Do you like my purple deer? I’m pretty happy with him. It would be fun to do a whole series of purple deer (or purple prairie animal) artworks.

All in all – a successful crafternoon with some of my favourite ladies.

I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I spent Sunday baking and visiting with friends in the sun. It was the perfect way to spend the last long weekend of the summer.

I made my famous banana bread for a picnic at English Bay. Check out the recipe for Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Bread from Everyone Likes Sandwiches. This is currently my favourite banana bread recipe. What’s your favourite banana bread recipe? Do you include chocolate chips and walnuts? Please share your recipes and tips!

I also made a Peach and Ginger-Pecan Cake for some friends that came over to visit in the evening. This cake was delicious. The recipe is from Desserts for Breakfast. The final product is a small, tasty cake that can easily be shared between six to eight people. The flavour combination of the ginger, brown sugar, and peaches was perfect for this end-of-summer/beginning-of-fall dessert. And yes, I did in fact eat the leftover dessert for breakfast. Truly a breakfast for champions.

This weekend I had amazing frozen Choco-Banana Skewers from M&M Meat Shops. They were so simple and tasty. This summer my mission is to find the best frozen banana recipe on the blogosphere.

Here are some recipes I can’t wait to try out! Bonus: some of these recipes are very healthy alternatives to traditional dairy ice cream (if you don’t include the chocolate and peanut butter of course).